Cold fronts warm up over the lake, and warm fronts pick up the moisture dumping it here as lake effect snow.

Original HID bulbs for over a decade? It's time. Heck, it's past time, Hashim.

Here's a good video on the bulb replacement:

 

I placed a order recently on Z1 website for the rear diff brace. Z1 website did not say they were out of stock/back order so I ordered it thinking it would ship immediately. I ordered it March 18. It was on back order and didn't ship until April 8.

I have it and installed it on the car now. Big difference. I used to struggle with traction on 1st gear but now it hooks.

 

Do you think the lighting difference is due to the fact that the bulb is not the OEM bulb? Nice find- those are a lot cheaper than OEM. How did you decide on those? Hopefully, you made sure not to touch the actual bulb with your finger so it does not burn out quickly.

I cannot wait to put the summer tires back on. We had really cold weather this weekend, but I will need to do it when we get back from our European car vacation. I do a track day at Road America a few days after we get back. I am curious to know if the rear differential brace finally gets rid of my stupid wheel hop with sticky tires.

 

I think the light output is due to the fact that my original bulbs were weak, that's all. It was a discussion last year in the chat thread, and advice from qmantran, IIRC. Agreed that the price was right, and I felt good with Morimoto since those are my LED fogs, still going strong four year later. And absolutely I used rubber gloves handling the bulbs, but avoided touching anything except the plastic base anyway.

One of the moments that stuck with me when I bought the car 7 years ago was driving off-highway in the dark on the way home from NJ to western NY. I was blown away at how much the Infiniti lit up everything in front of me. That was a whole new experience, something I got to relive this weekend with the new bulbs.

Still waiting to see your Ring video. (lucky duck)

 

That's good news about the Morimoto bulbs. I will have to check those out when mine finally bite the dust. I remember my first time with HID's (I think an '03 350Z) and thinking the same thing about how they were so much better in the dark. I had the same thought when I had LED headlights in my Leaf for the first time in 2012 compared to HID's.

I am at the Nurburgring on the 18th, but the video and pics of the trip will probably have to wait until we get back on the 25th. We leave tomorrow for Frankfurt. Now I am trying to figure out how to cram in as many museums and stops as I can (not all car related).

 

I had no idea HIDs got dimmer over time. I thought is was just my aging eyes.

Did you have to remove the front wheels in order to peel back the fender liners?

 

Yes. Remove the wheel, remove 6-8 of those push clips, then peel back the liner at the top. Don't be timid, you have to be somewhat forceful, but the liner plastic is tough. Once you do that, you'll see access to the headlight right in front of you, easy peasy. Turn the cap counter clockwise to remove, and twist the ballast (?) counter clockwise to remove too. Push the tabs on the retainer clip down then inward then up, and just lift the clip out of the way. Replace the bulb and put everything back together.

Um, you'll probably snap pieces off a number of those clips, so maybe prep by purchasing a bag of replacements. They're inexpensive and used all over the underside and in the engine bay, so it's good to have some on hand.

 

Thanks for the detailed instructions! I'm going to give it a go once the weather warms up a bit.

 

Took a few hours, mostly prep time, but I installed my Bell Raceworks Differential Brace today.

And I just got back from a drive.

 

And?????

 

LOL



I need to collect my thoughts for a few minutes.

 

I’m going to write this down now, and revisit after I get more seat-time with the car. Writing it all down now is a good idea, because I guarantee there’s going to be a new normal real soon.

Ignore the rusty drivetrain. It's just surface rust against a camera flash, and it's a Northeast car after all.




THE INSTALL

I prepared by ordering a 13mm angled box head wrench that cost like $8 and took 5 weeks to get here from China, only to discover this afternoon that it wouldn’t work, LOL. Oh well. Turns out a standard 13mm box head was fine, however it wasn’t perfect, and I had to really work with it to catch the subframe bolt heads enough to torque down the nyloc nuts on the underside. It took some patience.

So these frame bolts… the brace (for the OEM diff cover) is designed to use two holes at the bottom of the subframe. However, they’re over a hump in the subframe design, and a few inches deep, so getting a bolt into that area and properly into each hole was a chore. Or rather, I knew it was going to be a chore, so I did something stupidly creative. I tied a sewing thread to the tip of the threads, and the other end to a twisty-tie. That let me push the twisty-tie into the opening and through the hole, then pull the bolt after it on the thread also into the hole. I have to say, I’m kind of proud and a little embarrassed, but it worked perfectly. If I had long, thin fingers like Voldemort… but I don’t.

The two differential bolts… I could only access the lower one with a socket. The other had to be accessed with another box wrench. The old bolts came out easily enough, but as you can imagine, I could only put one back with the torque wrench, and kind of feel my way with the top bolt. Meh.

I tightened all four bolts kind of like car lugs, going around a few times, a little more each cycle, until they were all snug.

The fitment and alignment of Bell’s holes in the brace was perfect.

All told, about 2 hours. Lots of d1cking around with the ramps and the wrenches and test-fitting, clean-up, etc.


DRIVING IMPRESSIONS

Zero added noise. Zero added vibration. Zero added harshness. The only way you would know this brace was in place is to drive it before and after, like I just did.

I took it through a long winding backroad to the local High School, which is something I’ve been doing numerous times a week for years, because of the kids. It’s a crazy back road that dips all the way down to the waterline on the Bay, with hills, curves and one 90° turn that you don’t stop for. It’s a familiar and fun road.

Upshifts and downshifts are simply smoother, they just are. Gear shifts are precise, and gearing transitions are cleaner. You can clearly tell the car's back end is more stable, like something has stopped shaking, which is exactly what’s happening.

I also did two hard launches from a dead stop, WOT past 6000k through first, second and third at a highway on-ramp. Both times, the car hooked up with confidence, and the gear shifts went through without a hic-cup, which is nice when that happens. I’m not proud, and miss-shifts aren’t uncommon with my car when launching it. But these two runs were perfect. Very satisfying stuff.


CONCLUSION

Speaking as an owner of a 6MT with a few suspension mods, this brace is a solid win.



I expect to be thinking about this mod over the next few days and weeks, but first impressions are really positive.

 

Thank you so much for posting this! I have the same brace and I'm installing it here very soon along with my Whiteline diff bushings. My mind was just slightly blown with that little trick you came up with, definitely using that.

I'm glad to hear good things so far and especially that the fitment was on point. I think the brace looks pretty cool up there .

 

Glad you enjoyed my MacGyver moment.

Want another tip? Like I said, I installed the subframe bolts by inserting the bolt downward, and the nuts on the underside (instead of the other way around.) Either way, you also have some washers to spread the connection. So I used some double-sided indoor/outdoor tape to attach a washer to the underside of the bolt head. That way, the washer was fixed for the install.

 

Took the car out again late night, partly to check out the new headlight bulbs (nice!), but mostly so I can get straight in my head the review I just put down. And I wasn't wrong the first time around, the driving dynamics have certainly changed for the better. I ran a couple of second gear WOT shifts into 3rd, and it was like butter, clicking right into place. First gear crawls around the parking lot are smoother, and first gear launches hook up with authority. It's a collection of things, for sure... including wide rear performance tires and LSD.

Anyway, this brace is a solid mod for the 6MT. I keep seeing the phrase "get rid of the slop in the rear", but honestly I didn't know I had slop in the rear until I got rid of it and had the comparative context to know it's gone.

I wonder how it will hold up over time, like 3 or 4 years from now? On the one hand, this is a lot of real-world changes sitting on two little bolts. But I've got the Whiteline diff bushings back there too, and Z1's transmission mount further up front, so I'm already reinforcing the drive train in a way that should (?) put less stress on the diff brace than otherwise. IDK... not an engineer.

And if I'm digging this so much, will the motor mount swap be that much better, less or more of the same? Still two to four weeks out for that project.